As many of the regular readers know, this time of year is one of my favorite. Sure, kids are out of school, the weather is nice, and that summer vacation is within reach… but the real kicker? The release of the annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast – this time for the period between 2011 and 2016.

We’ve been doing this report for 6 years now, and it has provided a lens into many of the changes we’ve seen in the industry, and there are many:

Changes the units of measurement just to quantify the amount of traffic – moving from petabytes to exabytes to now – for the first time ever – zettabytes

Changes in the types of devices that are driving traffic – from primarily PCs to now smartphones, tablets, TVs and the Internet of Things

Changes in the services and applications we’re using those devices for – from primarily data-centric to ones that are far more experience-centric.

Throughout all of those changes, however, we have had a constant – and that is the seemingly endless appetite we have for bandwidth and the incredible opportunities the network provides for societies, businesses, service providers, and consumers like you and me.

This year, the Cisco VNI forecasts that traffic from 2011-2016 will grow four-fold to reach 1.3 Zettabytes by 2016. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes (10 to the 21st power in bytes = a lot). To put that in perspective, all the IP traffic that has hit the global networks in the Internet years to date (1984-2012) has generated 1.2 Read More »

“In 2016, over 1.3 Zettabytes of data will travel across Internet protocol (IP) networks. That’s over 10 times the traffic generated in 2008 and more than all the IP traffic that traversed global networks from 1984 to 2012 combined (1.2 Zettabytes).”

This estimate is from the latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) released today by Cisco which forecasts IP network traffic patterns from 2011 to 2016. The annual VNI rolling five year forecast has become a trusted industry barometer for how rapidly the use of global IP networks is expanding.

With today’s announcement of the latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) research, I’m excited to kick-off a guest blogging series that will highlight the stories behind the complementary VNI Service Adoption Forecast. This research predicts the future worldwide end user adoption for 27 services across residential, mobile and business categories.

These services range from SMS, mobile banking, location-based services, online gaming, consumer VoIP, mobile video, and many more. While this makes for interesting predictions on where technology will take us, it only generated more questions in my mind.

Travel website hotels.com not long ago published the results of a survey on hotel amenities asking travelers to identify the most important features in selecting a particular property. The most popular was the availability of free Wi-Fi access and that this amenity overwhelmingly factored into the decision on which hotel to book. Thirty-eight percent of travelers reported that free Wi-Fi played a part in their decision as a “must” to stay at a specific hotel, 35 percent reported it is the simple amenity they want to see more in hotels, with 31 percent wishing it would become a standard in all hotels in 2012.

A Hotels.com survey reveals which amenities guests want the most.

We see this trend towards “have to have wireless access” – in a hotel, airport, or at the office as being consistent with Read More »

The IE2000 industrial switch also interoperates across corporate and manufacturing floor networks in a cost-effective manner to deliver video and corporate applications to manufacturing plant floor.

The IE2000 switch series is key product from our Connected Industries business unit. According to Maciej Kranz, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Connected Industries business unit, “Major sectors of the economy are undergoing a transformation driven by new requirements around production and factory automation, traffic management, data analytics and machine-to-machine communication. Cisco’s Connected Industries business unit was created to help customers realize the benefits of the transition to Ethernet and IP across the operational technology segments including manufacturing plants, transportation infrastructure and vehicles.”

Many of you have highlighted machine-to-machine (M2M) communications as a key consideration for organizations over the next few years. Cisco’s own Visual Networking Index (VNI) showed that, by 2016, there will be nearly 2 billion machine-to-machine wireless connections. This includes everything from in-car GPS systems to asset tracking systems in manufacturing and other sectors.

The result is a need to more tightly connect and integrate devices, machines and vehicles with traditional enterprise networks. This “Industrialization of the Internet,” as Cisco calls it, will accelerate the networking industry beyond the IT and service provider (SP) networks in industries such as manufacturing and transportation.

Any industry analysts interested in more information on Cisco’s innovations for industrial automation, please contact me for details of our upcoming session with Maciej Kranz and the Connected Industries team. This will include a more detailed overview of this announcement, more background on the Connected Industries business unit and the opportunity for Q&A.

Some of the individuals posting to this site, including the moderators, work for Cisco Systems. Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of Cisco. The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Cisco or any other party. This site is available to the public. No information you consider confidential should be posted to this site. By posting you agree to be solely responsible for the content of all information you contribute, link to, or otherwise upload to the Website and release Cisco from any liability related to your use of the Website. You also grant to Cisco a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable (including rights to sublicense) right to exercise all copyright, publicity, and moral rights with respect to any original content you provide. The comments are moderated. Comments will appear as soon as they are approved by the moderator.